THE SPORT OF ROWING As had Cook and Courtney, Leader made extensive use of films to help teach technique, and according to Mendenhall, “he perfected seat racing – ‘Move the boats together; the 5-seats change places; row three minutes at 28.’ – to give an objective, immediate test, however cruel.”1804 In practice, “the Yale crews were learn- ing to row their own race against themselves and the watch, rather than other crews, a simple Leader version of what would be known forty years later as interval train- ing.”1805 The following year, Yale would row in- to Olympic history. 1924 Season Plucked from a class crew, the last man to earn a seat in the Varsity boat for 1924 was 7-man Benjamin Spock, yes, the same man who would become the world- renowned pediatrician and author of The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care. Spock described in detail the Yale sea- son of 1924 in his diary: “We had two races. “On May 5th in the Blackwell Cup at Derby, we beat Pennsylvania and Columbia quite easily. On May 17th at Princeton in the Carnegie Cup, we beat Princeton and Cor- nell quite easily. “Thereafter, there was a good deal of newspaper publicity urging on the Yale au- thorities that we try for the Olympics. How- ever, after the Carnegie Cup race we went right into training at Derby for the four-mile distance and gave up short sprints. “The actual Olympic races were sched- uled from July 15th to July 17th on the Seine in Paris, and the Olympic Trials in this country were scheduled for June 13th and 14th. 1804 Mendenhall, op.cit., p. 335 1805 Ibid, p. 336 “With the Yale/Harvard race on Friday, June 20th and the Poughkeepsie race on Sat- urday, June 21st, most crews decided not to try for the Olympics. At that time, Olympic rowing was dominated by the rowing clubs,1806 and the Navy announced that its 1920 Olympic Champion crew would come back into competition.”1807 The New Yorker: “Young [James Stillman] Rockefeller, the captain of the Eight, approached Goetchius1808 of the Alumni Committee in front of the Battell Chapel with his apparently diffident but equally determined plea to allow the crew to compete in the Olympic tryouts. The result was a hurried meeting in New York.”1809 Spock: “We were scheduled to go to Gales Ferry on Sunday, June 1st. That day we met with the Rowing Committee and individually and collectively said we wanted to try for the Olympics. “That gave us less than two weeks, and during that two-week period, we had exami- nations on nine of the days. “One of the complications was that if we should win the Olympic Trials, we could not go abroad with the rest of the Olympic team because the Harvard race was after the American boat sailed “So on Monday, June 2nd, the Yale Rowing Committee raised $10,000 in five minutes to send us abroad should we win, and first class accommodations were ar- ranged for us on the Homeric, sailing Satur- day the 21st at noon, less than 24 hours after the Harvard race. “As I remember our training, we had a time trial over what we guessed was the Olympic distance every day in the morning, 1806 especially Boathouse Row, Philadelphia clubs. See Chapter 55. 1807 Spock, p. 2 1808 J.M. Goetchius, a member of the victorious 1893 crew. 1809 Reed, op.cit., p. 18 480
